Ponyo: Das grosse Abenteuer am Meer (2008)

Ponyo: Das grosse Abenteuer am Meer: Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. With Tomoko Yamaguchi, Kazushige Nagashima, Yûki Amami, George Tokoro. A five-year-old boy develops a relationship with Ponyo, a young goldfish princess who longs to become a human after falling in love with him.

“As a long-time fan of Studio Ghibli and especially Hayao Miyazaki films, I went to the film right on the opening day. When I went out of the theater I had this strange feeling that something was missing, this u0026quot;magicalu0026quot; feeling I was experiencing in all Miyazaki films before, but I couldnu0026#39;t say why it failed this time. After I thought about the other Ghibli movies, I may know the reason: this film had most of the elements of a great Miyazaki anime: cute characters, wonderful key animation, a great soundtrack composed by Joe Hisaishi and the warm story telling giving you the feeling of watching a high quality Japanese animation film. However, two elements were lacking: a deep story and dramaturgy. The purpose of this film was obviously to entertain small children with a simple story line as in case of u0026quot;Totorou0026quot;, so a complicated story as been told in u0026quot;Spirited Awayu0026quot; or u0026quot;Princess Mononokeu0026quot; is not really necessary, but on the other hand, this story was simply too superficial. I could not connect to the main characters, because there was no character development, dramatic scenes were only limited and did not last very long. I really hate to give only 7 stars for a Miyazaki film, because I would give 10 stars to all previous movies right away, but this time it was simply not this wonderful u0026quot;ghibli experienceu0026quot;.”